Noko has delivered a new intranet for Czarnikow Group using specialist planning expertise and the Interact Intranet platform.
Czarnikow had clear business objectives for the project:- Provide staff with convenient access to key business information and services
- Improve internal communication
- Support the global workforce
- Help build a single company culture
In short: deliver an intranet essential to the daily working lives of staff.
Czarnikow Group is one of the most respected companies in the agricultural commodity markets. The business is driven by knowledge, expertise and information so delivering an environment that actively supports the working day is key to their competitiveness.
Delivering business objectives and supporting staff
"We decided that a new intranet would help us support a range of key business initiatives at Czarnikow Group, including improving communication to our global workforce, access to market reports, compliance and business information, streamlining business processes and offering internal support services" commented Stuart Durrant, CIO at Czarnikow Group.For the first stage of the intranet project Noko ran user-focused planning workshops to understand key staff challenges and tasks.
"When planning an intranet our first objective is to understand staff work patterns and look to support the way people work within the organisation," said Chris Attewell, Managing Director at Noko, "so we used a user-centred design approach to discover more about staff and the information challenges they face."
Making the intranet essential – Understanding staff needs
The project objective was to encourage user adoption by designing an intranet that makes it faster and more convenient for staff to perform their key tasks and daily job role.Noko ran user-focused intranet planning workshops with the Czarnikow intranet team, creating personas to understand key staff challenges, using reaction cards to assess brand and business objectives, and running card sorting sessions to plan the information architecture.
Several common staff challenges were identified during the planning workshops:
- Contacting colleagues, plus knowing their status and location
- Understanding if global offices are open or closed
- Knowing the time in key office time zones
- The current exchange rate for key currencies
- Access to market reports and industry news
- Being informed of company status information
Solving these issues became the focus of the intranet homepage, ensuring that staff had quick access to useful information. Other departmental sections were then created to house further resources, including ICT helpdesk information, updates and guides; HR forms, compliance documents and market information from the Analysis team.
Interact intranet platform
Noko delivered the project using Interact Intranet. Interact was the perfect platform because it is flexible, intuitive to use and offers rich intranet features."Using Interact Intranet has enabled our team to build and manage a fully featured intranet without the need for extensive technical development," commented Maggie Delaney, Intranet Manager at Czarnikow Group. "With minimal training it’s possible for our users to manage intranet content and features."
The results
By focusing on solving staff tasks and challenges Noko delivered an intranet for Czarnikow Group that was well received by staff and started delivering real value from day one. The Interact Intranet platform provides Czarnikow with a suite of intranet tools that solve key information, collaboration and business process challenges within the organisation, and will continue to expand with their business requirements."We’re really pleased," said Maggie. "The new intranet has gained excellent feedback from both management and staff and we’re looking forward to expanding it with new features and services over the coming months."
Following the successful launch Czarnikow Group are creating a roadmap that will introduce new Interact Intranet modules and further integrate the intranet into the daily working lives of staff.
